The present invention generally relates to vehicle crash discrimination systems used in controlling the actuation of an occupant safety restraint, such as an air bag, and more particularly to optimizing implementation of a vehicle crash discrimination system.
Generally, a variety of systems and methods are utilized for sensing a vehicle crash or sudden vehicle deceleration and deploying a vehicle safety device such as an air bag, or locking a seat belt, or actuating a pretensioner for a seat belt retractor. Typically, the safety device is triggered or otherwise deployed into its protective position when the system detects an impact or deceleration exceeding a threshold value therefor. These known systems and methods are generally designed around a predetermined crash discrimination strategy. Which looks to various designed physical measures, such as vehicle velocity, or change in velocity (jerk value), to provide crash detection.
However, to be effective, most crash discrimination strategies and their attendant threshold values tend to be narrowly tailored to specific vehicle makes and models, and/or specific types of vehicle crashes. Therefore, because known crash discrimination systems implement desired crash discrimination strategies using specific hardware and/or firmware designed to provide the necessary narrow tailoring, these systems are extremely difficult if not impossible to redesign or reconfigure for use with different crash strategies or vehicle types. The rigidity built into the system designs simply does not facilitate easy and cost effective modification, updating, and/or reconfiguration of the system.